I have no doubt that your characters spring entirely from your own imagination – but is it coincidence that there was a Rifleman Harris in the 95th Rifles who served during the Peninsular War? I haven’t read Sharpe’s Company, but there’s a brief shot in the film which shows Harris mending shoes, and the real-life Harris was a cobbler. It’s also ironic that the real-life Harris is remembered for his memoirs, “The Recollections of Rifleman Harris”, still on sale: while Jason Salkey has produced “The Video Diaries of Rifleman Harris”, now on-sale. Apologies for sounding like one of those obsessives, scrabbling around on the internet for scraps of trivia – it was quite a coincidence!
Jen